Staying strong: a black family endures

Jacqueline Woodson's impressive new book is a coming-of-age novel that readers will love. The story of Toswiah Green, a young African-American girl, and her family Shirley, her loving and gentle mother, her sister Cameron and her father Jonathan, a respected cop Hush opens with the Greens leading a comfortable middle class existence in Denver. But Woodson's description of their snug happiness...